Women and the future of Formula 1

0:00Rachel Robertson:This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:30Alba Lafuente:Plus, every product is 100 % vegan, cruelty-free, and made with clean, skin-loving ingredients that work with your skin, not against it. Amplify your everyday. Go to thrivecosmetics.com slash shine26 for an exclusive offer of 20 % off your first order. That's Thrive Cosmetics, C-A-U-S-E-M-E-T-I-C-S dot com slash shine26. It's 2009 and we're in the German mountains. A man straps himself into a car on the world's most dangerous racetrack. He whispers to himself,

1:01Rachel Robertson:It's time to put my balls on the dashboard. As he starts the engine. In 15 minutes, he's in an ambulance, unconscious. In 15 years, he's a billionaire.

1:10Alba Lafuente:This is Toto Wolff, Formula One's most powerful team boss and the breakout star of Drive to Survive.

1:16Rachel Robertson:This week on Good, Bad, Billionaire, how Toto Wolff made his billions. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

1:27Rachel Robertson:Hello, I'm James Reynolds. Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. In BBC Conversations, we bring people together to share their experiences. This time, we hear from young women aiming to be the future of Formula One. Motor racing is one of the few sports where men and women can, in theory, compete on equal terms. But you wouldn't think that from looking at almost any race. In fact, only one in ten drivers in motorsport is a woman. most compete in karting, the category of racing where professional drivers tend to begin their careers. The last woman to take part in an F1 race was Italy's Lella Lombardi, and that was 50 years ago.

2:11Rachel Robertson:So, to increase the pool of female drivers and to return women to the top ranks of motor racing, the F1 Academy was set up. It provides funding, training, and most importantly, track time for young women. As the season gets underway then, we're going to meet three of them. 17-year-old Alba Larsen is from Denmark. This is her second year driving in the F1 Academy. She's joined in conversation by newcomers Esme Kosterman, the 20-year-old is from the Netherlands, and from the UK, 18-year-old Rachel Robertson. They race in Formula 4 cars, which can reach speeds of about 150 miles an hour. Rachel began by telling me just what that is like.

2:52Marta Garcia:When I'm driving it, it doesn't actually feel that fast. Like it's all kind of the perspective when you're actually on track. It seems like you're actually going quite slow. And then it's only when I see a video of myself going down a straight and it's like, oh, I didn't realize I was going that fast. I don't know if Esme and Alba think the same as me. I'm sure they do.

3:15Alba Lafuente:Yeah, I agree. It's a funny thing because it feels kind of slow-mo when you're on track because everything is going by fast, but at the same time, it's moving slow. And I feel like it's especially when you're battling with someone, then you can feel the speed. But when you're driving by yourself and you're in a flow state, it feels like very cool and you're in the zone. It's like super fun. And I realized when I was driving in Jeddah with all those walls, I was like, oh, we're going really fast now. and it gives me so much adrenaline. And you get a little tickle in your belly. So, yeah, that's the thing that I feel when I drove there.

3:55Rachel Robertson:You're at the beginning of your careers, but I wonder, as you started out being the idea of drivers potentially going all the way to Formula One, did anybody ever tell any of you this is not the career for you?

4:09Alba Lafuente:Yes, definitely for me, especially the boys at the beginning in go-karting When I started there as a kid, they always tell me like, oh, it's not for girls and it's not your sport. Yeah, that they make fun of it. I don't care what they say. I think it's much what I'm doing now. And I really love to do this sport and I don't care what they think. I was in a very lucky position when I started racing because I had a sister that I could take to track. And me and her, we really had the sport together in the beginning. So I think for me, in the beginning especially, because I had some really good friends and people that brought me into the sport, because it was through a friend during the corona lockdown that I got introduced to racing.

4:54Alba Lafuente:So for me, I had some really good people around me that never told me that I couldn't do it. It was when I started getting faster and faster and driving more internationally that I saw that there was a lack of girls. And then there was once in a while a boy that was saying, OK, I don't want to lose to a girl. But I think this sport has changed so much. And now even like from Susie, when Susie Wolfe was driving, it's changed so much. So back then she got told that she wasn't allowed to race. But now I think it's less and less that you hear it. It does happen sometimes, but it's happening less and less.

5:35Marta Garcia:Yeah, I feel the same. very similar to Alba even I mean I've started at the time not too long ago so it was when actually W Series had begun so more women were already interested in the sport and I mean I never faced anything of any other male drivers coming up to me but you do see it on track I knew a few other girls in karting and you see it just in the way that the guys race them a lot of the times in their head oh it's just a girl in front of me I'll just put her off track and the way they drive is very different depending on who so I find being a girl especially in that lower junior series of racing and karting you really have to make your mark and have that aggressive approach otherwise all the other well most of them are all male drivers they will just take advantage of that and just put you off track.

6:30Rachel Robertson:And if you beat them, Rachel, what do they say to you afterwards?

6:34Marta Garcia:They won't say anything. Really? Yeah, they, a lot of, I find a lot of them, like if you lose, then, well, if you lose to a few of them, then they'll be like, oh, that was good. But if you win, they will not say anything.

6:49Alba Lafuente:Yeah, not even a congrats or anything. It's always silence, yeah.

6:54Marta Garcia:Silence?

6:55Alba Lafuente:Yeah. I think it really depends. Yeah, it's like they don't. And the boys. But yes, it does happen like that. I agree with you girls.

7:02Marta Garcia:Yeah, it's like they don't want to acknowledge that you're actually better than a boy.

7:07Alba Lafuente:And especially when we talk about when we were juniors in go-karting, that when you grow up, it's all right. It's going to be better and better.

7:15Rachel Robertson:Let's go back then a little bit in your lives. When was the first moment each of you thought, I really, really want to become a driver?

7:22Alba Lafuente:I think for me, the first experience I had with racing was during the corona lockdown when I got invited to try a go-kart. And I remember I wasn't going very fast. I didn't even put full throttle the first day. But I just remember it felt like such an adrenaline rush you get because your head moves back when you press the throttle and you have all these emotions because you can feel on the tire Mac that there's bumps and all this stuff. That's when I really fell in love with driving. and then later on when I got faster and faster and I started competing and I started beating everyone that's when I kind of realized okay I really want to do this full-time not only as a hobby because in the beginning I only saw Formula One and that's only men and I think when I then saw that I could like I started seeing other female drivers like uh in the GT world or Susie Volf and And then I started seeing, OK, women can also be in this sport.

8:26Alba Lafuente:That's when I realized I could become a professional racing driver. For me, it's a different story because my father was a big motorsport fan. So he was always F1. So he decided to go on go-karting with my brother. And I was with my mom, always did dancing and things like that. And I get a bit jealous of my brother and father. They're always going every weekend, go to the go-kart circuit. And I watch them. And at one point, I told my parents, I don't want to dance. I want to go as well on the circuit driving. And yeah, there it all started. And I was six years old. There it started with racing and then the go-karting, the adrenaline, the overtakes.

9:12Alba Lafuente:And yeah.

9:14Marta Garcia:I actually can't pinpoint age where I really fell in love with it. It seemed to always be with me. I remember learning to ride a bike without stabilizers on my fourth birthday. And I've always just loved that feeling of driving something, whether it be a scooter or a bike. And then that translated into I would have a Nintendo DS and play car games and find a Formula One game. So I remember when I was eight years old in primary school writing on a what do you want to be in the future? I wrote F1 driver and I remember my teacher actually coming to me saying an F1 driver, that's not a thing. OK, I'm pretty sure it is.

9:56Rachel Robertson:Did you say, yes, it is?

9:58Marta Garcia:I was like, yeah, that's what I want to do. Driving. But it wasn't I never actually grew up. My family don't. They're actually not interested in motorsport, to be fair. Not until I started doing it. It was only until I was 14 where I asked my family, my dad, can I try go-karting? The trajectory was just up from there.

10:19Rachel Robertson:You're all now in the F1 Academy where you'll be racing exclusively against other female drivers. What will that be like in comparison to the driving you've done against male drivers?

10:32Alba Lafuente:I never drove with so many girls at the same moment. you're only always like the only girl in the competition or championship or like with two other ones but it feels really powerful to be there with everybody on the same moment driving on the circuit so yeah I'm really looking forward to the first race with all the girls

10:53Marta Garcia:yeah I'm I'm the exact same I'm really excited to see also the driving characteristics just between going from a mixed field which is always pretty much 99 % male to then just an all female series and really learning because of course women like neurologically are not the same as men so there's so many differences and how that shows when all 18 of us are driving on track together I'm very curious to see how the dynamic is with that I'm sure Alba has a lot more insights with her

11:25Alba Lafuente:year yeah now that I've already done a year I'm looking very much for the next one I think the series keeps growing F1 Academy keeps growing I think from last year to this year I feel like the level has really risen last year we had Maya and Dorian really fighting for the title this year it seems like there'll be more drivers in for the fight so it's really uh yeah interesting to see how how F1 Academy grows and I did both F1 Academy last year with all female and I also did the British F4 last year where it's we were only two girls most of the races so it's been very fun last year to switch between those two and I think what I really enjoy about F1 Academy is that we're you know me and Esme are going to be teammates this year and last year I had some really good teammates I'm really looking forward to this year and the thing is you can really you can hang out in between sessions in a way that you don't always hang out with the boys because the boys have something that you're not always invited or something such as such as they don't always invite you to stuff sometimes they want to be only the boys and I came from handball which your only girls there as well so when I came into motorsport that's what I really missed and now with F1 Academy.

12:45Alba Lafuente:I have that back again, the girlhood.

12:48Rachel Robertson:Alba, Esme and Rachel, F1 Academy drivers. We'll hear more from them shortly. I'm James Reynolds. You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

13:06Alba Lafuente:It's 2009 and we're in the German mountains. A man straps himself into a car on the world's most dangerous racetrack. He whispers to himself,

13:14Rachel Robertson:It's time to put my balls on the dashboard. As he starts the engine. In 15 minutes, he's in an ambulance, unconscious. In 15 years, he's a billionaire.

13:24Alba Lafuente:This is Toto Wolff, Formula One's most powerful team boss and the breakout star of Drive to Survive.

13:30Rachel Robertson:This week on Good, Bad, Billionaire, how Toto Wolff made his billions. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

13:39Rachel Robertson:In our weekday news programme, Outside Source, We've also been talking to women working in other areas of motorsport. And we thought you'd like to hear more on the differences between female and male drivers. Katie Denver is Driver Development Lead at F1 Academy. And Iba O 'Connor is a race engineer at Prima Racing.

13:57Alba Lafuente:I don't want to fall to the stereotype, but the guys don't think. Girls think and they overthink sometimes. So this is something actually that's interesting as an engineer. I think one benefit of actually being a female engineer is the fact that your brain kind of functions on the same wavelength as the girls. you can kind of get into their head a little bit more and you can understand sometimes where they're overthinking where maybe certain things where it's not necessarily that a male engineer can't work with a female driver it's absolutely not that but I think sometimes being the same gender does help in terms of kind of giving you a little bit more of an edge in terms of understanding the the mentality and the psychology behind what your what your driver might be thinking or feeling at a given time it's not like one can break harder than the other you know they definitely are all capable of the same I think even as you move up the categories yes okay steering effort is definitely something that will become a more of an issue just based on physical differences but I think there's always ways and means around that.

14:50Alba Lafuente:That kind of over-analyzing and awareness it also applies off track I think female athletes or drivers are much more aware of the bigger picture so a 16 year old boy for example I think would absolutely believe that they'll make it to the top levels of the sport and they don't need a plan b in terms of like education or another part of their identity or their interests and they throw absolutely everything into the sport without a plan and if it doesn't work they'll just figure it out whereas I think female athletes tend to consider the fact that it's difficult to reach the highest levels regardless of gender and therefore they tend to pursue other interests they have education or careers alongside their development and I think it doesn't mean they don't believe they can't or won't make it but it does sometimes mean that they kind of overanalyse or maybe hold back a little bit.